Every company tracks how long its money will last. Almost none track how long its leader will.

"That gap is one of the most neglected risks in business," says Bradly Howland, CEO of Alkemi Collective.

Serial entrepreneur Michael Burtov calls it the psychological runway — how long a founder or CEO can keep absorbing uncertainty, rejection, responsibility and loss before their judgement, relationships, health or leadership begin to suffer. It appears in no board pack and on no investor deck, says the agency.

Yet leaders shape the mental health of everyone around them. Research by the Workforce Institute at UKG found that 69% of people say their manager has the greatest impact on their mental health, adds the agency.

"I've spent more than two decades helping leaders find the right words for their hardest moments. I'm far less practised at admitting when the hard moment is mine," says Howland. "If the person setting the tone is running on empty, it shows up in every decision, every meeting and every culture they lead. Looking after leaders is not indulgence. It's risk management."

The Weight of Every Decision

"The decisions never stop. Each one lands somewhere in someone's life: a salary, a household, a career," says Howland. "You can leave a meeting having made the best call available and still carry it home. Meanwhile, the next decision is already waiting."

When Howland became CEO around four years ago, Alkemi was a small business running at a loss. He aimed to rebuild it into a larger, profitable agency, then watched a run of client losses, driven largely by market-wide budget cuts, test everything that had been built, says the agency.

"You assume that once you've turned a business around, you've earned some steadiness," Howland says. "Then clients cut budgets, and within months you're restructuring and saying goodbye to people who had been part of the business far longer than you had. You can know each decision is right and still lie awake over it."

"I noticed it at home before I noticed it at work. I'd be at dinner, physically there, but running cash-flow scenarios in my head. My patience got shorter, and I was sending messages at hours I'd tell my team not to. I could see I was becoming a more reactive and unhealthy version of myself," adds Howland.

Howland says he now treats his psychological runway the way he treats cash flow — he monitors it and acts early.

"That means protecting time to think rather than just react and leaning on people outside the business who will tell me honestly how I'm doing," says Howland. "It also means stepping away properly. In September, I took three weeks away with my partner and friends, and part of me resisted it given the year we were having. But a leader who can't step away hasn't built a business. They've built a dependency."

The Loneliest Seat in the Room

"There's a myth that the CEO has to be unshakeable. Nobody is," says Howland. "My background is in diplomacy, which taught me that composure is a skill. But composure isn't the same as being okay. There are conversations you can't have freely inside the business. Something you say while thinking aloud can become something someone else worries about all weekend. My team deserves honesty from me, but not my unprocessed anxiety."

"When you carry everything alone, small problems start to feel enormous," adds Howland. "You need somewhere outside the business, whether a mentor, a founders' forum or a professional, where you can say, 'I'm struggling with this' before you've worked out the answer."

"Being honest about pressure doesn't remove your responsibility to lead well. It's what allows you to keep meeting it," says Howland. 

Sharing the Load

"Letting go was one of the hardest lessons for me," he says. "If every decision has to come back through you, you limit the team and exhaust yourself. If a business only functions because one person is always available, that isn't a resilience problem. It's a design problem."

“Pressure flows downhill. If I'm anxious and reactive, my team feels it before I've said a word," says Howland. "If I tell people to protect their evenings but send messages at midnight, they'll believe the messages. My team doesn't need me to be certain about everything. They need me to be honest about what we know and clear about what we're doing."

Glass Balls and Rubber Balls

Brian Dyson, former CEO of Coca-Cola Enterprises, compared life to juggling five balls: work, family, health, friends and spirit. Work is the rubber ball that bounces back. The others are glass.

"Business culture still celebrates people who drop the glass balls to keep the rubber one in the air, and I've been guilty of it," says Howland. "Being physically present with people while your mind is still at work has a cost, even if nobody puts it on a spreadsheet. If your health goes or your relationships pay the price, no strategy fixes that."

The Cost Nobody Calculates

Burnout, workplace stress and unaddressed mental health challenges are estimated to cost the South African economy and businesses between R160-billion and R250-billion each year. This reduces the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by up to 4.5% annually. The cost when a leader's runway runs out is just as real, if far less visible, says the agency.

"When a leader burns out, it doesn't stay with them. Decisions get worse, good people leave and the culture in a business takes years to recover," adds Howland. "We should talk about the sustainability of leadership with the same seriousness we bring to cash flow and succession."

"Companies insure their buildings and their equipment. It's time we took the same care with the people running them. The title doesn't make you less human. Pretending that it does just makes you less effective," concludes Howland. 

For more information, visit www.alkemi.global. You can also follow The Alkemi Collective on Facebook, or on Instagram.

*Image courtesy of contributor